A Visit to the Denver MCA

Practices of Design had their final meeting at the Denver MCA
(Mu of Contemp Art).
I brought my camera and couldn't contain myself at all the opportunities of reflections and planes.

I went snap happy.

David Adjaye, the architect created a delightful play of light, shadow, and shape not diminished in the least for its lack of acute angles.

The museum reminds me of ones in Europe, understated hiding among the urban landscape.

Revealing their secrets only when you stumble upon them.
It messes with your perceptions of what you think you know about this urban landscape.

MCA is a Leeds Certified building which adds to its aura.

Sustainability, renewable resources and a conscious business approach are championed by this building.

Its their poster child in a community that is saying to the rest of the world: "Yes we know and we are acting on it."

Oh, the art inside, on the walls is great. Easy to look at, to contemplate with room to breathe.

As much as I'm not a great fan of Damian Hirst...
I must admit his piece Saint Sebastian was most memorable and striking.

In Good We Trust, Denver Biennial 2010

In Good We Trust is an idea that deliberately points to the friction between the image of the US and its efforts in the world over the last 10 years and the actual acts of good occurring all over the country. The focus is away from the negative to the positive intentions of those actions and getting the words out. Bruce Mau, Massive Change a well known designer/artist came to Denver a couple of weeks ago to present his ideas for a biennial event planned here in 2010. Initiated by Mayor Hickenlooper, local Denver artists including Seth Goldenberg instructor at UCD, are working towards developing a vision and the tools needed for this event. Mau's vision includes very interactive exhibits, "We want people to change the way they think." Sustainability and reproduction over production are some of the topics under discussion. They hope to expose people, open their minds to the creative possibility to change the world. Sounds like talk about infrastructure to me:) What do designers and artists have to do with infrastructure? (see my previous post).
Main idea: What would happen when you bring science and art and business together to create intuitive, inventive ways of changing existing processes and dynamics. They intend to build an experience in the Denver Biennial where you can walk into that vision and come away with motivation and ideas for changing the possibilities they see needing it in their world.

Recycle Conundrum

Remember the saying most of grew up with that was tossed at us at the dinner table by our parents? A warning like a dull knife of awareness raising: "Eat your food, there are children starving in Africa, China, Uzbekistan...", or some version of. To the mind of the 7 year old concepts that broad were incomprehensible.
This incomprehensibility can be used to describe the recycling conundrum of today.

On a recent trip to Moab, Utah, I chanced to visit the recycling center attracted by the large hill of crushed glass, which no one wanted, has no commercial value, took 2 years to accumulate.

The story of this recycle center is just one of many seeping like toxic waste from small communities around the West.

Moabians have taken a little time getting used to recycling. The idea has a difficult time gelling with the myth of the indomitable West of unending resources, unregulated freedom, and independent spirit. So the efforts of all citizens are to be celebrated. Drop into this mix the difficult reality of recycling, its inability to etch a place in the capitalist market which values production over reproduction and sustainability and what you get is a small hill of crushed glass thats growing faster than our economy at this point in time.

This is really a dicussion about value, intrinsic, verses capitalist.
Enough.
Moab's recycling center is looking for great ideas for reusing glass.

Thanks to the folks at Moab recycling center for taking the time to fill me in.

A visit to Anabliss and Ironton

Its always a pleasure to be invited into someone else's art space. I want to thank Matt Coffman of Anabliss and Jill Hadley Hooper of Ironton Studios for welcoming us, (Brian Liester's Practices of Design class at UCD) into their art space and sharing with some of their history with us.

Anabliss:
Matt, the founder of Anabliss, walked and talked us through his space. His staff was friendly and willing to share their experiences. Each had a unique story that led them to the doorstep of Anabliss. Thanks for sharing.
I learned there is a distinct difference between practicing graphic design and branding identity. "Its not just a website [per se], its a complete branding initiative" says Matt. It comes down to controlling collateral. Consistency flows through all aspects of business collateral.













He mentioned Joe Duffy's book, Brand Apart, as a great reference of brand strategies.
Anabliss does a lot of Pro bono work. A current project in the works is the Warren Village Project. Matt talked about how the design process gets started. Words of wisdom: design around copy. Having a good copy writer can be essential to good design work. It helps focus a project in the right direction.











Know what your value is.
Overall Matt was quiet and humble about his work. His passion for design was evident by the way he talked about his work and his design process. I enjoyed seeing the diversity of work completed since he started his business. What a great insight into the business of design.

Jill Hadley Hooper:











There was a distinct difference between the sleek quiet interior of Anabliss humming with the sound of Macs and the, in the trenches, rusting metal facade, smelling of turpentine, feel of Ironton Studios. Jill walks the line between digital design and illustration. Right next to her studio space was a voluminous expanse of white walls used for display. A gallery.











It's something to contemplate. As a mostly digital designer I rarely face the blank wall of judgment, yet there is something elemental about nailing up a piece of your work and giving it the space to be, to settle, to grow. Much of digital design is about meeting deadlines and pleasing clients with hardly time for a breath in between. Jill manages to walk in both worlds successfully.
"Cuter, pinker, rounder, neuterer," says Jill of the pressures of the commercial illustration world.
After hearing some of the stories behind her work I began to see the appeal of having a white wall available for use. The ying and yang of art. That which feeds us can destroy us. Thus the white wall, which on reflection I secretly named Moby Dick. Then I jumped into my vehicle I affectionately call Pequod, and drove away.















"... truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more." — Moby-Dick, Ch. 11

Low Art vs High Art, [A Paradigm Shift in action]

Contemporary art is experiencing growing pains. The established dynamic is being challenged by today's changing cultural technototems spurred on by the unapologetically democratic, universal leveler, the Internet. Shakespeare's famous line"All the worlds' a stage" has come to represent today's reality. An individual's values figure more prominently. Voices once excluded are now emancipated whether for the better is not relevant. That these opinions directly effect change on all levels is what is pertinent.

Bansky, the modern low art technician is fostering this debate through guerilla art marketing

If the word graffiti rubs you the wrong way think of low art in terms of a refashioned use of the idea of recycled reuse.

More Numbers and Percentages

The trillions of dollars lost in the last few days could represent the total number of yellow leaves that have fallen this Autumn in the mountains of Colorado...







8,451.19 represents the number of leaves on the ground in my backyard.
Time: 4:09PM ET
Color Change: -128.00 (1.49%)
Prev. Green: 8,579.19
This Morning: 8,568.67
Day's Range: 7882.51 - 8901.28
52wk Range: 8,523.27 - 14,280.00












FDR's take on his version of the Banking Crisis.
"We had a bad banking situation... bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This [shocked] the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. It was the Government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible -- and the job is being performed."

Internet Storytellers, Landscapes into Silence

I don't live in a heavy traffic area yet there are days and nights where I wake up thinking this is the day the internal combustion engine will finally been silenced.

silence

I recently came across an internet storyteller, artist, anthropologist Jonathan Harris and his project Whale Hunt. The silence of this piece is profound. It extends into the visual landscape invading the senses in a powerful, elemental way.

Along the same lines, Polar Artist, Irene Sullivan's "Excerpts of the Arctic" a photographic exploration of her time spent in the Arctic in 1980, continues to echo the silence nurtured by many of today's digital storytellers.

Design examples everywhere

I looked around and found some cards that caught my eye.
I complied the ideas I liked and then uniqued them into my card.














Some thoughts that came to mind as I did.
a. What is it that I do? Is it apparent in the design?
b. What colors do I think speak best to that?
c. What font?
d. Does my design emote ?

I found a few great resources:
a. "A Brand Apart" by Joe Duffy.
b. www.justcreativedesign.com
c. Are you a bad designer? (yikes!)

Identifying Markets and Branding

Investigating how other design firms market and brand themselves.
Well I work in design now and have pondered these questions...where is my niche.
Small business, artist, women...
Someone asked me "where is the money in that, most artists can't afford websites or anything?"

I found there are lots of plug in design firms and web developers, but the most common response from my clients were they tried that and it worked for a while but now they want more personal design that represents them and their business.
My competition:
They have templates for artists...
other peoples pixels.com

I found some interesting sites:









www.3indesign.com









www.pascalarquitectos.com







www.contempomodels.com







www.leoburnett.com

From 500 to 499 to...

500 one day, 499 the next and then "poof" suddenly trillions have disappeared in a day.
Add this to the approximate 39,000 per breathing American that has been seeping out like a leaky faucet everyday since the war began.
I'd say this has been a decade of numbers.
Perfect fodder for an art project.
Reductionism.
What matters is the NUMBERS, the Wall Street mantra as seen in this CNN top story:
"The New York Federal Reserve Bank Thursday also pumped $55 billion into the nation's financial system. That comes on top of $70 billion that it pumped into the system Tuesday."

"The Bank of Japan, Bank of England and Bank of Canada set up new swap programs with the Fed, with Japan getting $60 billion, England getting $50 billion and Canada getting $10 billion."

And so on...

But even the power of numbers is collapsing as we speak.
We are on the event horizon of...
Some were afraid of Cern's Large Hadron Collider creating a black hole that would end the world.
Seems like there has been an invisible black hole operating within our midst for years.
Its all in the matrix of numbers flashing in the news every day.

Have you seen the latest poll numbers? The percentages are...
And so on...

Backlash Against Design and Innovation

Following the links on Renee's site plaid and polyester>Design21>
A r t i c l e:
>A lack of Design knowledge:
"We actually live in a world full of bad products and bad design." says >>David Carlson
"Quote"
//"Bruce Nussbaum from BusinessWeek puts it like this:

'The truth is that the backlash is against the fad of innovation, not the fact of it. The backlash is against CEOs who get up and shroud their companies and their reputations in the rhetoric of innovation while continuing to sell out-of-date, poorly designed products and services. Consumers know this is fake and realize that the talk about innovation is not authentic.'" read more://

>Look at: as art, play, information...
>Dunne and Raby

Thinking about Holes in Cheese

Here's another intriguing quote from Collings:

"Artists have interesting concerns which no one ever thought was worth thinking about before, like holes in cheese. Advertising expresses a new world of oceanic immenseness where no one is alone. We want to be shocked by art."

The Inner Life of Painting

I picked up this great book at a used bookstore, "A Brief History of Painting" by Roy Bolton published by Magpie Books . What attracted me to it was the introductory essay by Matthew Collings In his essay he talks about contemporary art. Mr. Collings does a great job discussing the dichotomy in art that exists today, offering great examples and explanations that has helped me to articulate my unease about the current trend in the art world.

Plus he's a gas to read.

He doesn't take himself too seriously.

"Art must be unconventional, but galleries must be conventional

so you can tell its really art in them and not just something left over from a party or a murder."

Dialog City Air forest

DNC week in Denver 2008

The Avant Garde

"Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics." - Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-garde.

I've been excited to see all the events happening in Denver and the
surrounding areas this summer in anticipation of the DNC. dialogcity.org is a great site that has invited international artists to Denver to put on interactive "dialogical site specific" exhibitions.

Another great event going on this and next week is the
Boulder International Fringe Festival.
It may not really be "fringe" if I care to be consistent, but it is interesting never the less.

As I looked over the site and all the contributing artists I came away slightly confused as to what exactly was I looking at. Contemporary art is all over the map, which in my mind is a good thing because it allows for a variety of expression. My confusion arises with the misuse of the terms innovation and avant garde. I always thought these terms referred to work outside the mainstream of the art world. Works that were literally on the edge or fringe of society. Seems as if the contemporary definition of avant garde refers to those artists in the"scene", fully excepted, welcomed, and integrated. Its become like one of those girl scout/boy scout badges you can collect along the way to...fame?

I noticed that the Home Depot employees collect similar badges that they hang from their uniform aprons as they advance through the ranks.

Ethics and Authenticity

This summer I had the opportunity to attend a workshop led by well known artist/philosopher/physicist Enrique Martinez Celaya. The topic of discussion was "the challenges of making art in the age of careerism and art funds." It was a fascinating discussion that ranged over vast topics including philosophy, ethics and authenticity in art.
It was a difficult discussion to follow where every assumption made about definitions or concepts concerned were challenged. Mr. EMC as I like to refer to him (eMC2) did a comparison between the works and talent of Velásquez and Rembrandt, suggesting that perhaps Rembrandt lacked subtleness. His talent was visibly displayed in full glory on the canvas to impress. Velásquez on the other hand revealed his complexity and subtleness by what he didn't paint on the canvas.
The main idea that was consistently generated was "Why do you do art? and "Is this really art or just decoration?", "What is art?" The discussion generated many thoughts and questions such as "If someone gets paid big bucks for their art, does that legitimize it as art?"
I've been digesting the discussions throughout the summer and have decided to turn to the philosophers of old for some background and guidance, Satre, Heidegger, Hume, Kant....